


A Hesitation

by stele3



Category: Black Sails
Genre: F/F, Femslash, Post-Series, Pre-Slash, Technically selkies, mermaid au
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-23
Updated: 2019-07-23
Packaged: 2020-07-11 21:19:56
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,537
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19934665
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/stele3/pseuds/stele3
Summary: The woman turned up early in the morn.Anne, who had indulged in a bit of rum the night before—enough to sleep but not enough to affect her balance—snapped awake at the uneven beat of a hand against the door. She’d been expecting someone, likely another survivor from Hornigold’s crew or a bounty hunter from the Spanish, but she hadn’t expected anyone to knock.______The Major Character Death is Jack, who died before the story starts. Sorry, Jack.





	A Hesitation

**Author's Note:**

  * For [gohaywire](https://archiveofourown.org/users/gohaywire/gifts).



The woman turned up early in the morn.

Anne, who had indulged in a bit of rum the night before—enough to sleep but not enough to affect her balance—snapped awake at the uneven beat of a hand against the door. She’d been expecting someone, likely another survivor from Hornigold’s crew or a bounty hunter from the Spanish, but she hadn’t expected anyone to _knock_.

Rising from her chair against the wall, she pushed her hat back on her head and drew a pistol, then crossed to the door, undid the two locks, and threw it open.

The woman standing outside froze at the sight of Anne’s pistol, one hand still raised. Anne inspected her quickly, found her to be a minimal threat, then looked past her—but there was no cadre of worthless, cowardly fucks hiding in the scrub. No horses pawing at the uneven dirt and stones. It fully seemed that this woman was alone.

“The fuck are you?” Anne demanded, keeping the pistol pointed at the woman’s forehead. She suddenly remembered Jack orderin’ the fort doors opened then shooting the man outside without a word. She’d been proud of him, in that moment, defendin’ his friend.

Wasn’t anyone to defend here except herself. May be that’s why she ain’t pulled the trigger yet.

“Hello,” said the woman. She was dressed strange, in a frilly corset with the stays half undone and her breasts near to spilling out, but a pair of dirty man’s trousers with the cuffs rolled up. “I was hoping that I could speak to you.”

Had a funny accent, too. French, maybe? “The fuck you want?”

The woman’s lips parted but she said nothing for a long moment. Thick kohl ringed her eyes but had been smeared onto her cheeks; her dirty hair hung around her face. She was beautiful, Anne realized with a jolt. That happened sometimes, like being snuck up on and hit in the cunt. Anne had long since learned to take a punch or even a bullet, but beautiful women still caught her where she was soft.

May be the woman saw, because her big dark eyes got bigger and more pleadin’. “I need help,” she said. “I have been shipwrecked on this shore, and—”

Stepping back, Anne slammed the door and relocked it.

The knocking resumed.

“Fuck off or I’ll fuckin’ gut you,” Anne bellowed through the wood. She should anyway—if the shipwrecked cunt wandered into the little town to the south and mentioned Anne’s presence, there’d be trouble from that direction, too. But hell, she couldn’t spare the bullets, and she was still sore from dragging three British soldiers to the cliff and shoving their bodies over. This shipwrecked cunt wouldn’t be near as heavy—her waist had looked narrow enough that Anne could have put both her hands on it and encircled her completely.

The knocking stopped. Scowling, Anne paced the shack’s one room until she reached her chair again. She sat, put her feet up on the cache of priceless gems resting in front of the fireplace, tipped her hat forward, folded her arms across her chest, and went back to waitin’

-o-

The next time she lifted her head, the door had been opened and the woman sat at the table gutting a fish.

“The fuck?” Anne demanded. She had latched the door. She was _sure_.

The woman had put on a dirty man’s jacket over her corset and rolled up the sleeves. She smiled at Anne and gestured to the fish. “Are you not hungry? There is enough for both of us, if you will have some, and then we can talk.”

Anne was fuckin’ starved, actually, and had been trying to ignore it for the last two days. She’d managed to drag the cache ashore and into this abandoned shack, but when she had returned to the beach below to search for any supplies that might have survived the wreck of their sloop or the frigate chasing them, she’d only found seagulls feasting on the remains of her crew.

Until two nights ago, she would have guessed that she was the only survivor of both ships—but then three British soldiers had attacked her on the narrow mountain path while she’d been layin’ traps for hares. And now, this fucking woman, pulling bones out of a fish while barefoot. Christ, she looked mad.

“Who the fuck are you? I won’t ask again.”

The woman blinked her big kohl-ringed eyes up at Anne. “My name is…Max.”

“Don’t sound too sure of that.”

“Does it truly matter what my name is? Call me whatever you like.”

“Where’d you come from?”

“I was being held on board the large boat.”

“Hornigold’s ship? The _Lion_?”

“Yes. The _Lion_.” Max said that word like she’d never heard it before. “I was a prisoner. When the ship sank, I swam to shore.”

The storm had been a fierce ‘un. Anne had been captain of the sloop only but in name. Its crew had been almost entirely men, and men were creatures disin-fucking-clined to listen to a creature like her. They had run aground, their hull splitting open on the rocks of this craggy shore.

Anne had gone into the dark waters with her eyes closed and her breath held, for she had grown accustomed to the absence of men’s respect for her, and knew when disaster might strike regardless of her efforts.

“Bullshit,” Anne said. “No one could have survived that storm.”

“I did,” Max said.

“Why?” The men around her had grasped and struggled, their eyes blind and their mouths agape for even the smallest gasp of air. It would’ve taken strength beyond measure for anyone to reach the shore. Anne had, because she was Anne, and the fire in her burned brighter than the fire which meant to consume her.

Max licked her lips. “Because you have something that I need.”

Anne tilted her head. She already knew, but she played along. “Where?”

“Have you looked inside it yet?” Max asked, gesturing towards the cache.

The wooden crate was secured with thick metal bars and held in place with two locks. A pair of keys, still stained with the blood of Jack’s man in St. Kitts _and_ the blood of the British bastard Anne had killed to get ‘em back, hung on a chain around Anne’s neck.

“No,” she said. Jack had always been the one who gave a shit about treasure, dreamin’ ‘bout what he could do with it. If you asked Anne—which no one ever did—that much treasure could only buy trouble.

She wasn’t fucking wrong. She was also the only one of the whole sorry lot of ‘em still standing.

“There is something inside,” Max said slowly, “that is of little or no value to you, but very, very precious to me. A coat of fur, gray in color. If you would but—”

“Oh, I see your fuckin’ game,” Anne snarled. She looked towards the door again, which was ajar. Max followed her gaze with her brow furrowed. “You get the chest open and then they follow behind with a bullet. Well _fuck you_ , cunt—”

“There is no one,” Max protested, stumbling to her feet and backing away as Anne advanced on her. “I am alone—”

“ _Bullshit_.”

“Wait, wait.” Shaking back her jacket, Max tugged at the top of her corset to expose one lovely, round breast. Her nipple was dark and pink. “Surely we can come to an agreement, yes? It would be a shame to be enemies when instead we could be _friends_.”

Anne sucked in one breath, then another. She kept her eyes on Max’s face, which had gone ashen. Behind her, the door stood very still. She waited, but none of those things changed.

“Put that away,” she said, and carefully withdrew her dagger from Max’s throat.

The fish sitting on the table had been stripped of its scales. Picking it up, Anne skewered it on the point of her dagger. Guts spilled across her thumb and she pulled a face, shaking the entrails off her fingers as she turned, making her way around the cache to a sputtering fire in the hearth.

Kicking a log deeper into the hearth, Anne thrust the fish into the resulting spit of flame. “I don’t need friends.”

“But you do. You are here, alone, with a treasure that so many people desperately want to claim for themselves. They will be coming here…you must know they are coming. Why do you not leave this place?”

“They hanged my partner. Strung him up. And I wasn’t there to stop it.” She gestured with the knife and fish at the cache next to her. “ _That_ is what I could do to hurt them back. That’s the treasure he gave his life to claim. He wouldn’t want them to have it.”

The fish flopped at the end of her blade and Anne thrust it back into the flames, listening to the skin pop and sizzle. They might’ve burned her the same way, if she hadn’t’ve fucked that guard. He’d been a right greedy bastard, quick to abandon her when she’d got with his child; the executioner had balked at a pregnant woman anyhow, and she’d been saved long enough to get away, onto a sloop that’d only tarried long enough to rescue Jack. They’d got her instead, and hadn’t hesitated to let her know their disappointment.

The baby had been stillborn. She’d dropped it over the side of the ship and been at the helm within the day.

Max asked, “Do you really think that dying in this place will matter anything at all to the men who hanged your partner?”

Anne smirked even as a tear dripped down her cheek. “No. But I can find and kill every motherfucker on this island who survived the _Lion_ , and then I can open that cache and take whatever I can carry. The rest I’ll push into the fucking sea.”

She’d forgo the fucking treasure entirely, except Jack would raze the gates of Hell in protest. Christ, she’d trade it all in a moment to have him alive again—what good is five million pieces of eight if they can’t buy back the crack of a hangman’s noose? But what’s done is done, and she’d promised him to get free if the worst came to pass. They’d exchanged those vows, the closest a pair like them ever got to the marital life, off the coast of Tortuga: they’d been chased up and down the isles by Spanish boats, and British sails had been sighted in the opposite direction.

In that vise together, they’d each promised to survive any way they could, even alone. Anne hadn’t expected to make good on her end so soon. She felt like a ship without ballast, threatening to capsize at a moment’s notice.

Behind her, Max said, “I can help you do that.”

Anne turned with a retort that died in her mouth like a mouse in a bucket of water. Max was still at the table; she’d put her tit away and pulled the jacket up, but suddenly the firelight behind Anne caught in her eyes and they shone like two pale green discs. Suddenly her face did not seem quite right: all the features remained the same but had drawn tight as an overstretched mask.

Suddenly, Anne simply _knew_ that the thing seated at her table was not a woman at all.

“What the fuck’r you?”

Max tilted her head. “You are a sailor. You must have heard tales of creatures that lived below the waves. That pulled men from the railings to fill their lungs with water and eat their flesh.”

When the hull of the sloop split open, Anne had plunged below the kicking feet of her crew. Even this far north, the lot of them flailin’ about and bleedin’ into the water would draw sharks—or what she’d thought were sharks. The dark, sleek shapes had cut through the water so smooth, they’d seemed like shadows. Anne had seen them before—had seen water close over the head of a screaming man as he got yanked under.

She had not screamed, nor splashed. She had not let herself feel fear. The shadows had passed her by and she’d made it to shore alone.

Anne’s fingers tightened around the knife…but then she loosed them. Wouldn’t do to start screamin’ and splashin’ about now…they weren’t too far from the edge of the bluff, after all.

“Aye,” she answered, taking one step towards the table and then other and other. The shack was not large. She set the half-cooked fish on the table but Max did not spare it a glance. She was watching Anne’s face.

Anne asked, “Why would you do that?”

This close, Anne could hear the hiss of air between Max’s teeth, like a snake. She’d put her pretty human face back on, mostly, but Anne could see those teeth. “Those men kept me in chains. I will help you hunt them, and then you will give me what I want from inside that chest.”

Anne considered the offer, and her. She was still beautiful, even with the sharp tips of her teeth peepin’ from behind her lips like a dozen knife points. Anne wondered who all that beauty was for. Not Anne, surely: wasn’t the way of things, even if Max had waved a tit at her.

“Don’t know how much good you’ll be to me,” she said plainly. “They’ll be armed. You any good in a fight?”

“There are many ways to fight. Do you think the _Lion_ ran aground by accident?”

“What—you sayin’ you done that?” Max smirked, smug as a cat cleanin’ feathers from her claws. Thinking back, Anne remembered thinking that Hornigold’s frigate had them, half-shattered on the rocky shore; but then the frigate had turned as if caught in a crosswind that no one felt.

“That was at sea,” she pointed out. “We’ll be ashore.”

“You have not killed me yet. Why not?”

Because she was curious. Because Max had already set the hook where Anne was softest. Because she was alone, tilting to the point of capsize, and she did not want to be.

Because everyone needs a partner.

May be all that showed in Anne’s face. Why she always wore a fuckin’ hat and kept her head down. Max saw. “The men hesitated, too. They paid for that. I can make them pay again.”

 _And what’ll I pay for hesitatin’?_ Anne wondered. It’d be more than just a fur coat hidden in the cache, she was sure of that…but she’d promised Jack. Long as she could stand it, she’d fight for every day and burn, burn, burn the fuckers to the ground until their ashes rained down on Jack’s head in Hell. She hoped it would keep him warm until she joined him there.

Lifting her hand, Anne spat in her palm before offering it to Max. A brief flicker of confusion and disgust crossed Max’s features, but after a moment she spat in her own palm and fit it to Anne’s.

Her skin was soft and cold.


End file.
